2018 Beverley Beekeepers Auction

Conflicting with Whitby Goth Weekend this year was Beverley Beekeepers' Annual Auction. No doubt this caused sleepless nights for many beekeepers in the East Riding as they deliberated whether to dust off the New Rocks and head for the coast or empty the back of the estate and head to Woodmansey in search of bees and woodware.

Jars, buckets, woodware, shiny things, fondant..

The Auction started at 11am on the Sunday morning, I rocked up at half past. The hall was noticeably fuller than previous years. As expected alongside the usual hives and Supers there was a huge range of equipment on offer, ranging from buckets of formic acid pads and sugar to microscopes and a cuddly toy.

Bucket of 10 Formic Acid Pads, went for a pound

Hard to imagine an apiary without one of these

Actually the bucket of Formic Acid went for £1, the cuddly Winnie the Pooh dressed as a bee and accompanied with a few large flowers went for £6. The acid is for treating Varroa, the Pooh bee and flowers are props for educating children about pollinators. I'm not sure what the Brunel SP20 Microscope went for but there was also a binocular microscope amongst the lots too.

Beekeeping isn't all banging nails and burning stuff

As usual there were a few shiny motorised extractors standing out against the boxes and wood. I bid on a couple of those but was unsuccessful so if I get a honey crop this year I'll be extracting with my trusty two frame manual extractor.

Motorised Extractor, it's gone to a new home.

One thing that caught my eye was the Honey Twin-Spin. A two frame electric extractor which appears to have been designed by some guy was hugely into fifties sci-fi and probably saw flying saucers in his sleep. It's a two frame radial extractor but unlike every other extractor I've ever seen holds the frames almost horizontal. It's made by Brinsea Products who are still around but nowadays focus on poultry rearing.A quick Google finds the extractor  mentioned in an old Kent Beekeepers Association Newsletter. The writer comments on how efficiently it extracted as well as being particularly easy to clean too. It didn't generate much interest and there was only myself and another chap bidding on it, he got it for £16. It's an odd looking and bulky thing but £16 for a motorised extractor is quite a steal.

Flash Gordon's Honey Extractor

In previous years there's usually been a lot of Nucs on sale, probably because most beekeepers get free ones with their first colonies and later it's probably one of the first things they build for themselves. I've made four myself, and still have a couple of others knocking about. This year the Nuc contingent was limited to a group of five brightly coloured wooden Nucs and a couple of Poly Nucs with built in feeders. Perhaps people are keeping their spare Nucs for making splits later in the year.

How come that bear is in so many photos? :-o

A couple of Poly Nucs

Of course the main draw was the bees. Winter losses over 2017/2018 have been seriously high across the UK, Europe, USA and Canada, figures I've heard bandied about have been up to 90% for some. This means there's going to be a lot of beekeepers looking to replace stocks and conversely far less bees available for sale.

Bees for sale

There were 12 colonies for sale this year. 8 of them were 5 frame Poly Nucs with July 2017 Queens ready to be hived.They went for £240-250 each. From the descriptions I think these nucs actually contained bigger colonies than my surviving hives at the moment. I've long since realised that trying to predict bidding is impossible so I wasn't hugely surprised when two full sized colonies in National Brood boxes complete with floor and roofs containing 6 and 7 frames of brood respectively went for £230 and £240 each. That's less than the smaller colonies in the Nucs and basically includes a usable hive. A Poly National hive with 6 frames of brood and four spare empty Supers also went for £240 and the last colony another Poly National but with a half filled Super and 3 spare empty Supers went for £250. The last colony I bought at a previous auction was £150 and one year in York I saw 2 Nucs going for £50 each, the prices this year probably reflected just how heavy the recent Winter losses have been.

These bees couldn't wait to get to work

It was really cold outside but a lot of people braved it for the bee sales. Before proceedings went back inside a gazebo and a 6x4' trailer also went under the hammer. Whilst probably not the first thing most people think of a Gazebo would've been really useful for me over Winter when I was working on hive floors in the snow. I've also had the weather change after painting hive parts and hd rain completely wash off the wet paint in the past.

The right place for a gazebo or trailer

Back in the warmth the hall was noticeably emptier. Probably as a lot of people had come specifically to buy bees -have I mentioned those Winter losses?.. I guess a few will also be going to the York Beekeepers' Association Auction on May 12th. After the bees have sold and the crowd has thinned a little is a good time for bagging a few bargains. A few people got honey buckets with lids at four for a pound, mesh floors went for a pound each too. I picked up a solid wooden floor for £7, that'll be going under a spare hive at the apiary in case a passing swarm feels like moving in. They're also handy to have around when you're moving full Supers and extracting.

Perfect for Asda

There's usually something unusual at these auctions and this time the oddest thing was probably a wooden box on wheels. Inside it on one side there were a couple of net curtain wires attached to the frame to hold things in place. The were also six swarm boxes on offer but they didn't meet their reserve.The swarm boxes are lightweight boxes the size of a 5 frame nuc with straps, a close fitting sliding lid and mesh areas for ventilation. When you're moving bees it's important to keep them cool. Being based in a city I've not had to travel far to collect a swarm yet so I just bring a Nuc when I go to collect them. If I was travelling further I'd probably think about one of these ventilated boxes.

Ratchet Straps, Uncapping Tray and Fondation

As the Auction progressed I picked up a box of beekeeping books and a medium size bee suit for a fiver, quite a few people are interested in seeing my bees so I got that for visitors. There was some steelware in the form of a couple of uncapping trays, that always gets interest. A large honey warming cabinet went for £30, useful things, this one looked like it could take a couple of buckets at a time. At the moment I have some jars of liquid honey that's granulated so they'll need a spell in my warming cabinet before they sell.

Honey Warming Cabinet

Something which didn't sell but would save someone a lot of labour was a motorised Honey Creamer. From the outside it looked a lot like an extractor but inside instead of a cage for frames there was a little propeller near the tank floor. You load it up with liquid honey, add some existing creamed honey from th previous year, turn it on then go do something else whilst it mixes. At the moment I use a strirring device that attaches to a drill and cream the honey in 9 litre buckets. It's still fairly hard work and takes a long time mix it consistently.

Honey Creamer

Stainless Steel Settling Tank with Filters

The second to last lot was a heavy little stack of glass rectangles. It turned out they were glass quits, basically a glass Crown Board. Each was in two halves and each half made from two panes of glass joined together. They allow a beekeeper to see where the bees are in the hive without fully opening the colony. I'm not sure why these are in halves but it might be to do with weight and strength, it'll also mean not having to open up the full hive at once which should reduce flying bees. Nobody was interested in them although polycarbonate quilts had had some interest earlier in the day, so I them up for £2, making them £1 each. I'll see how they are to use -if I like them I may be popping up the road to Jack's Glass for some more. The last item was a very tall stainless steel Settling Tank with built in filters. I was interested in that but so was everybody else so it was soon bid out of my intended budget.

Section Racks

Towards the end I managed to pick up a pair of Section Racks with metal spacers. There was the usual boxes of jars and foundation. I didn't need any foundation this year having traded in a load of wax for foundation last year. I did pick up 72 1/2lb jars with lids for £12 and 72 1lb jars with lids for 17. Not the most interesting purchases of the year but jars are quite an overhead for beekeepers so any chance to save on them is welcome.

Solid hive floor and a little reading material

 When I got home with my little haul the first thing to do was scorch everything - well okay not the books, that'd've gone pretty badly, but the floor, section racks, their metal spacers and even the smoker, whilst it doesn't come into contact with bees it comes into contact with gloves that probably have.

Snelgrove Board, front and back views

I had bid on a couple of Snellgrove Boards but didn't win, however the chap from Green Man Honey who had won them was kind enough to sell me one after the auction. They're made from two thicknesses of ply with cutaways at the exits on one side, an unusual way to do it but will certainly make for a strong board. When I scorched it the glue holding the mesh liquefied so I scraped it off, burnt it off the mesh then stapled the mesh back in place.

This Smoker reminds me of The Klangers.

It was a fairly busy day, with three different auctioneers taking the gavel. The impact of the Winter losses on attendance was pretty obvious. As usual the auction is a handy place for beginners to quickly and cheaply stock up on kit. As well as the sales mentioned above National Hives assembled and painted, complete with two supers were going for £40-£50 each.

Floored

In response to last Winter's losses which were worse than all my previous years added together I've decided to switch from treating Varroa by trickling oxalic acid solution to vapourising it instead. The main difference for me is that whilst both treatments work best when there is no brood in the hive trickling can only be done once a season whereas the Oxalic Vapour treatment can be repeated. Last Winter was warm enough in November, December and the first half of January for the bees to continue raising brood, this delayed my application of Oxalic Acid solution and also reduced it's efficacy. If I was vapourising I'd've been able to apply it two three times a week apart. My regular open mesh floors would need sealing up to use a vapouriser  which would be a bit awkward so I decided to make new floors to better accommodate a vapouriser.

Rather than reinventing the wheel I looked at a few floor types and decided to make a version of the "Kewl Floor." Terrible name sounds like something from an 80's teen oriented music magazine, possibly it was invented by a chap with an unfortunate name - doubt it though. The Kewl floor is based on the Dartington Hive floor and similar to a Heather Floor.The entrance is a set back vertical 8-9mm wide slot which mice can't get through and the bees can better defend from wasps by having guards on both sides.

There's a few webpages with plans and descriptions of the Kewl Floor, my starting point was a post on The Apiarist's blog with lots of handy pictures and even a cutting list for National Hive size floors, I use Commercial Brood Boxes which are (meant to be) 5mm longer and wider than Nationals and based my floors on wood available from B&Q as, fairly typically, I decided to start work in the late evening and they were still open. As per usual I took a tape measure along as wood is sold using "nominal" measurements which seems to be wood yard speak for "we're shortchanging you."

I found the B&Q's nominal 47x75mm meant 46x72mm, their 22x75mm was 21x70mm and their 25x100mm was actually 21x96mm. So a difference of 1 to 5mm depending on which measurement you're looking at. Whipping out an Android Tablet and firing up the excellent Google Keep I knocked out a quick design based based on three different sizes of wood with a 465 x 465mm footprint. My plan was to make floors that I could treat using a Vapouriser from below the mesh floor.

Google Keep diagram - just add 22mm battens on top

To accommodate a vapouriser the rear wall of the floor which would be below the mesh needed a 14x90mm slot cutting into it. That meant a quick trip out to buy a chisel. I'm pretty sure with a bit more time and patience a semi decent carpenter or trained monkey could've made a nice uniform cut but I was working outside, it was cold dark and snowing so I just did it quickly and tidied up the face with a file.

14x90mm slots to accommodate vapouriser

I decided to build the floors using wood glue and screws. That may be a bit of overkill given the strength of modern wood glues but with a few supers and an artifical swarm on top the hives can be extremely heavy. Marking the outside surfaces with a rough map of where the pieces would go I drilled pilot holes for the screws.

You know the drill

I used a drill with a screwdriver bit and lubricated the screw threads with a little wood glue. Using such long screws turned out to be a complete pain the proverbial. I had problems with screws getting stuck part way in and the drill stripping the heads so I'd have to stop and use huge plumbing pliers to grab the head and slowly remove the things before trying again with a new screw.. eventually I switched to nails. I gather nails have a greater shear strength than screws although screws are better for holding pieces tightly together. Switching to nails with pilot holes and a little wood glue really sped things up.

Stripped screw head. Again.

Clamping the pieces to screw and nail together took a little creativity with the clamps, I gather corner clamps exist but I don't have any. What I ended up doing was attaching the rear piece first then the front pieces and finally clamping the middle vertical piece tight against a 9mm drill bit to get the correct gap size for the slot.  It took a little knocking with a hammer to get the middle piece of wood in place. There is a bit of wriggle room in the 8-9mm slot with really as it's intended to give room or the bees to pass back to back. The important thing is not to leave a gap over 9mm wide otherwise your hive becomes a Winter Mouse House.

9mm drill bit as a spacer

Snow! Fantastic...

With the main structure and the entrances complete the floors needed a mesh section over the main area. I had a couple of mesh squares knocking about from previous projects and ordered another ten from Simon the Beekeeper. Initially I took a mesh square and cut out an area slightly wider than the entrance slot and stapled it in place then put the 22mm battens forming the top edge over it. Cutting a slot in the mesh was a bit of hard work. I later cut a rectangles big enough to cover the hole but small enough to fit inside the battens and stapled them in. I used stainless steel staples to hold the mesh as I don't want condensation to rust them -that and I a load left from re roofing my chicken coop.

Two down, eight to go

I was initially measuring and cutting the battens to fit the floors but decided a faster and more accurate way was just to attach the whole batten butted against an off cut then cut the excess then repeat butted against the previous piece. This saved a lot of time, accommodated tolerances across the pieces and removed of wastage from measuring mistakes ..which I did manage a few of earlier - used them to fuel the chimnea I'd lit to supplement the three pocket warmers I was using as most if this was done across a few freezing February evenings.

Sliding Bottom Boards

The bottom boards were made from thin plywood I'd found someplace. I made thin wooden runners to go underneath the boards making a very close fit and attached a batten under the rear of each board to function as a handle underneath.. I actually only made three of these wooden sliding boards as I only had a little plywood and make the rest from correx. The correx ones are just to use as regular sliding bottom boards for checking varroa drop but the wooden boards should be able to support a hot vapouriser. I'm only going to be able to vapourise one hive at a time anyway so three wooden boards should be okay. You can buy correx sheets but its easy to find free as it's used for signs which often wind up in skips or just fly tipped.

One completed floor with fitted wooden bottom board

I made ten floors in total. I don't really intend to have ten full size colonies in the foreseeable future but it's handy to have a few spares around in case something unexpected happens. I also like to be able to swap out floors for fresh ones after winter to remove any dead bees and detritus and sterilise them.

Art Attack

I gave the finished floors a lick of shed and fence paint on the outer surfaces leaving the inside and pack of the entrance area unpainted. I used some badly mixed brown and black paint to give an uneven coloured finish making the floors look a little less tempting to others and making each one unique which I hope will make it easier for the bees to identify which entrance is their own hive and reduce drift.

10 Finished Floors

I'm quite pleased with the finished floors but it later occured to me they could be improved by having the lower part on the entrance sloping down instead of horizontal. It would mean making an angled cut along the back of the landing board so it fits flush to the back of the alcove and make drilling pilot holes a little tricky but would have two advatages. Firstly rain would run off and secondly anything the bees drop out of the entrance it such as dead brood, bees, wasps, bits of wax, newpaper from unites etc would fall away too.

Save the Date: Beverley Beekeepers 2018 Auction

There's been no posts for a while but I'm still busy with the bees and a few other things over here. One day I shall keeping free is Sunday 29th April as it's the Beverley Beekeepers Annual Auction. It's where I got my first bee colony and a large amount of my kit. Worth a visit for old new beekeepers. Last year I went to pick up a few little bits and pieces and came away ten Commercial Brood Boxes :) Check out www.beverleybeekeepers.co.uk for more info.

2018 Auction!

Going to the Pub!

Been a little too busy to update the site lately, however the bees have also had a busy year and the honey crop is in! I shall be at Larkins Bar on Saturday 2nd December 12:00-17:00 selling honey, ticture, honey dippers and polish. That's to the miraclke of technology I also accept card and contactless payments too :-)

If you do pop into Larkins the range of bottled beers
is definitely worth a look too :)

Swarm Collecting

This year I've had surprisingly few calls about swarms. None in fact. However in early July an ex posted on Facebook about a swarm in a tree at her parents' so I offered to pick it up. I get free bees, they get no bees, the bees get homed, everyone wins :) I rolled up in the early evening walked to the door knocked and was told I'd just walked straight past the swarm. I looked round and there they were. In a low tree at about shoulder height in a very round cluster - the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a text book.

Well bee-haved, ready to be-hived.
Beekeeping is 90% punnery.

They were on a single small branch so I thought it's be easiest if I just cut the branch then deposit it complete with the bees in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought with me. Simple plan. It actually turned out to be a flawed plan. Taking a firm hold of the branch on one side of the swarm I cut the branch on the other side of the swarm as planned. Instead of carefully carrying the cluster to the Nuc and dropping them in I watched the cut branch in my hand bent double dropping half the bees on the floor below. Excellent stuff. I'd gone from having the swarm in a tight easy to move cluster to a couple of thousand bees in a pile on the ground, a thousand or so on a floppy twig and a few hundred on the wing looking to form a new cluster in the tree.

I assumed the bees on the twig were probably the oiriginal centre of the cluster which should include the Queen so I deposited these in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought along with a frame at either side. I then used another frame of drawn comb to remove the bees from the ground and shake them into the box. They're attracted to the comb so when I held it to the bees on the ground they climbed onto it for me to move them to the Nuc. When I'd got the majority off the ground I turned my attention to the fliers who kept returning to the tree. Giving it a shake here and there to dislodge the landed bees and a few puffs of smoke to mask any pheromone they eventually gave up on it in favour of the workers Nosanoving at the Nuc entrance. I left the Nuc on the ground and returned a few hours later.

Almost there

When I got back the bees had gone to the Nuc as hoped. There were a lot hanging about outside the entrance though -unsurprising as it was a particularly warm July evening. I used some gaff tape to secure the crown board and used some more tape and a cardboard box to make a cover for the front which would leave room for the bees outside the entrance, after all I didn't want them flying about in the car with me.

Most of this happened in transit.

It was a slow drive to the out apiary but I got there with relatively few bees getting loose in the car. I carried the Nuc complete with gaff tape and cardboard to the hive stands and  removed the packaging. During the drive bees had been coming out of the entrance filling the gap between the Nuc and the cardboard, luckily the gaff tape held for the journey.

Home sweet home

I put the Nuc roof in place and left the bees to it. When I did my next inspection I was relieved to find the bees had chosen to remain in the Nuc. I'd used a small National Travel Nuc I had sat in the shed for this lot. It took me a while to locate the Queen. I'm pretty sure she was still a virgin when I caught the swarm as it took me so long to find her and it was a long time before eggs started appearing too. When I did find her I noticed she had a very yellow abdomen compared to most of my other Queens. I considered raising the swarm as a new colony but later decided to use her to replace a swarmy queen in an existing full size colony and united the workers to an existing hive that needed a boost.

Renewing Brood Boxes

At this years Beverley Beekeepers Auction I picked up an unprecedented 8 Commercial Brood Boxes. After sterilising them it was time to check the joints and add cleats to the sides giving me better handles to move a heavy box with than the rebate handle which is a standard part of the Commercial specification.

Finger Joints and screws, Rabbet Joints with screws and possibly glue

The boxes had been made in a variety of styles, some had finger joints reinforced with screws, some had what I think are called rabbet joints which seemed to be glued and screwed and a few had the sort of large finger joint type things I use because cutting all those small fingers is hard work. Of the ten boxes only one had lose corners. It was one with large tab finger type joints and no screws.
 

Bracing corners

After a few minutes with a tee square to hold the corner straight, a drill for pilot holes and a clicky screw driver I put 4 2" wood screws into each corner making it far more solid. The other boxes were all very solid. Not sure how old thy were but some smelled of tar when I was sterilising them so I'd guess they've seen a few years use and being well made I'm sure they'll see a few more years use yet. They all had a little rectangle of wood ground away which I think must've been a brand from a previous owner.

Four of the boxes had rebate handles the rest had handles attached to the outside by now rather rusty nails. Using a clawhammer and a pry bar I removed the old handles and replaced them with longer cleats of tanalised wood. You wouldn't use tanalised wood for hive bodies but stick to the outside of the box I suspect they'll be fine and will live a little longer than untreated wood.

Wooden Cleat, glued and screwed

You only really need handles on two opposing sides of the box, but i prefer to put them on all four sides to give me options when I'm moving hives. I actually only put new cleats on six of the ten boxes. Hopefully I've got more than I need and four should be surplus. Once done I painted them all. I used an uneven mix of green, black and brown shed & fence paint to give them an old and worn look as an anti theft strategy and only treated the outer sides.

Empty Brood Boxes make an excellent advent re playground for cats.

Cleanse it with Fire!

After the surprising abundance of Commercial Brood Boxes and frames at this years Beverley Beekeepers' Auction I had a little cleaning work to do. Used beekeeping equipment can be a vector for nasty diseases and viruses so properly sterilising second hand kit before introducing it to the bees is a must.

Toby surveying the work ahead.
He didn't help.

Normally hive boxes are sterilised by scorching with fire. Gamma irradiation works pretty well too but isn't hugely popular in the UK at the moment. The Hulk was created when Dr Bruce Banner came into contact with Gamma rays which tells us that Stan Lee knows bugger all about Gamma radiation. The cost of acquiring and storing your own radioactive isotopes and equipment pretty much rule that out for most beekeepers over here so I decided to go with fire.

So far I've always used a small butane torch, the kind that uses small metal cylinder you buy from DIY shops. Looking at the job ahead I was pretty sure I'd be blazing through cylinder after cylinder trying to scorch all those boxes so it was time to upgrade. I popped to Toolstation and picked up a gas hose, regulator and torch kit -basically a Roofers Torch but a few quid cheaper for buying it as separate items. With torch ready I then needed a tank of propane. You can get them from garages and they offer much better value for money than buying loads of little disposable canisters. The downside is you need to pay about £40 deposit on your first bottle. I didn't really want to do that. It turns out that because of the deposit system the gas supplier remains the owner of the actual gas bottle and they exchange it whenever you get a refill. This means that scrap merchants won't accept them and you cant take them to the tip, unfortunately nobody ever seems to get a full refund on their last gas bottle so it's a canny move by the suppliers. This means unwanted gas bottles tend to get fly tipped a lot. I had a drive around till I found a nice red 13KG Calor Gas bottle sat doing nothing popped it in the car and took it to a local garage. There I exchanged it for a 6KG bottle of propane saving myself the deposit -and presumably returning a lost bottle to circulation, Everyone's a winner -well me anyway :)

Flame on Johnny

The bigger the bottle the cheaper the gas, I opted for a 6KG bottle rather than 13KG simply because I need to be able to lug it about the patio and at some point it's likely I'll want to take it to the apiary. Something I hadn't realised was that the nozzlethingbit (it probably has a better name, but I don't know it) on the gas bottles are made with a reverse thread so when I tried to attach the regulator turning it clockwise it didn't go in at all. After a light bulb moment I spotted the problem and managed to assemble the thing. With it working I blazed through all eight Commercial Brood Boxes with ease. LPG gives a hotter flame than the butane mix in the small cylinders and with my new torch I was using a bigger flame too. It did take a little getting used to working round the hose though and at one point I singles off a 2" wide strip of hair from my right forearm. Oops. No major damage though.

Sterilised woodwork

With the boxes now sterilised it was time to turn my attention to the frames. I decided to boil them in a Soda Crystal solution using one of my Burco Boilers. They didn't fit in completely so it meant boiling them in the solution then turning them over to do the other end.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I stopped them floating up I used the Burco lid as a weight. It took ages to get through all the frames and a few I had left still to do.It occurred to me that the metal boiler was probably losing a lot of heat out of the sides as the evening wore on and temperature dropped so I grabbed a few brood boxes and put them over it.

Sheltering the Burco in a few Brood Boxes to keep the heat in/

After boiling each frame was given a quick scrub with a nylon brush in a plastic tub of water and stacked up to air dry. Once thoroughly dried the frames were put into the brood boxes for storage.

Stack of cleaned frames left out to dry